Politics. Sex. Science. Art. You know, the good stuff.

Stephanie Zvan is an analyst by trade, but she's paid not to talk about it. She is also the associate president of Minnesota Atheists and one of the hosts for their radio show and podcast, Atheists Talk. She speaks on science and skepticism in a number of venues, including science fiction and fantasy conventions.

Stephanie has been called a science blogger and a sex blogger, but if it means she has to choose just one thing to be or blog about, she's decided she's never going to grow up. In addition to science and sex and the science of sex, you'll find quite a bit of politics here, some economics, a regular short fiction feature, and the occasional bit of concentrated weird.

Oh, and arguments. She sometimes indulges in those as well. But I'm sure everything will be just fine. Nothing to worry about. Nothing at all.

Categories

EVENTS

I share a lot of links on Twitter and Facebook that I don’t blog about because I don’t have much to add. The reading list is a periodic feature where I share those links with my blog audience too. Of course, you’re still welcome to follow me on Twitter.

Around FtB

Why Secular Hedonism Needs Social Justice–“And several people pointed out that asceticism often rises as a reaction, not necessarily to a hedonistic and pleasure-based society, but to a society in which sensual pleasure is primarily available to a few rich and powerful people at the top.”

The growth of atheism among the non-college educated–“It is clear that the total number of dropouts is increasing. What is happening is that those without college degrees are dropping out faster than before so that the differential between them and the college-educated is disappearing.”

When My Nan Died: Religion, Closets and Love.–“There were so many things my nan never knew about me. I couldn’t tell her. She wouldn’t have understood. She would have worried about me endlessly. My meaning and her understandings would have been too different.”

Et tu, Caroline Criado-Perez?–“You are in a social position where you are able to sanctimoniously give other human beings a license to survive as their authentic selves under the condition that they ask nothing of you. You know what you call that?”

Canceling the Kickstarter Project–“Even if I believe the concept behind the book is a valid one, the execution was poor and it upset a lot of good people. My apologies to anyone in that crowd.”

Why Disability History Matters–“History gives us the tools to think about us—whoever that us is—as being part of something bigger; we have a past, which means that we have a present and a future.”

Geneticists decry book on race and evolution–“Now, nearly 140 senior human population geneticists around the world, many of whose work was cited in the book, have signed a letter to The New York Times Book Review stating that Wade has misinterpreted their work.”

You wanna know what pisses me off?–“He’s acting like he doesn’t care. He’s acting like it’s all so super casual. She’s smiling that smile. I shift my position so that my bag is between them. She immediately steps around me, like a bunny hopping over barbed wire. I stay put. Wait to see if he tries to push past me.”

Of Rape graders and Hero worship.–“Once again, there is nothing reasonable about grading rape. And no, you cannot objectively generalise on the impact of rape. People are affected by trauma in different ways. We handle and cope with trauma differently.”

“Outrage culture” and manufacturing enemies–“None of this is new. These are just a couple of examples, but people like Grothe and Clint have spent years attacking people in the movement who dare to offer criticism of offensive ideas.”

Share this:

I share a lot of links on Twitter and Facebook that I don’t blog about because I don’t have much to add. The reading list is a periodic feature where I share those links with my blog audience too. Of course, you’re still welcome to follow me on Twitter.

Around FtB

Please, taunt me some more–“The incident actually happened, and those are my words. I have no problem with that. However, it’s not making a point in their favor.”

I’m Only Doing It for the Attention–“After all, when it comes to promoting a community currently as small and as besieged as the ex-Muslim community, or viewpoints as oddly controversial as being in favor of social justice, every little bit of attention counts.”

Is This Thing On?–“You ain’t here for me to talk about myself, though. You’re here for the goods, right? Here’s a few things I’ve written over the past few years to get you started and give you a taste of what I’m about”

Spousal Support (Part 1)–“I asked him if he really thought so, and he said yes, and did he promise, and he said yes, and there was a hug and a kiss, and I believed.”

DIY Science Zone Fundraiser–“The zone is a hands-on, weekend-long extravaganza that makes science accessible to everyone, whether or not they have their own lab goggles at home. It’s open to all ages, and all levels of experience–and all equipment is provided.”

Violation–“And because I am a queer woman, this is a normal experience with added layers of entitlement from men to not only my body and my space, but to the moments I share with women that happen to take place in public and semi-public venues.”

In praise of GUADEC–“Marina also discussed words to avoid when talking about people and technology, something I realized I fumbled when I gave my keynote.”

You, Sir, Are No Robert Ingersoll–“‘The men who declare that woman is the intellectual inferior of man, do not, and cannot, by offering themselves in evidence, substantiate their declaration.'”

Moving the Goalpost on Polyamorous Success–“For as long as people are uncomfortable with poly relationships they will demand that we prove our ‘stability’ and ‘success’ by having longer and longer relationships that fulfill an increasingly narrowly defined structure.”

On the “dispute” between radical feminism and trans people–“[I]t infuriates me that I’ve had to take a break from writing a piece on the Tories’ ‘liberation’ of the NHS to write 8,500 words to debunk a sexological concept that was shown to be untenable before the start of the First World War.”

Comfort Without Lies for Small Children–“It isn’t easy, and sometimes even people who are themselves nonbelievers succumb to the temptation to comfort children with talk of heaven and guardian angels.”

Share this:

I share a lot of links on Twitter and Facebook that I don’t blog about because I don’t have much to add. The reading list is a periodic feature where I share those links with my blog audience too. Of course, you’re still welcome to follow me on Twitter.

Around FtB

They are afraid–“It can be alarming and overwhelming to have a torrent of criticism dumped on you. Absolutely. But it still doesn’t tie you to a stake and set fire to a bunch of damp wood piled at your feet (damp to make it burn slowly and thus prolong the agony).”

Let’s sit down together and discuss that proposition itself–“I don’t think it’s excessively emotional to point out that there’s something blood-chilling about seeing people who are safe talk calmly detachedly and in the abstract about the risks or tragedies faced by people who aren’t like them.”

Bad news and good news…–“With contributors from Gaza, it is sadly almost inevitable that the Palestinian poets and artists involved would be hit by the ongoing Israeli bombardment, shelling and invasion which has killed hundreds so far.”

Bad, Bad, Bad, Bad Feminist–“I did all of this nonsense, mostly to fit in, mostly due to the need to belong. I spent most of my childhood being rejected, so when I was a young adult, well, I lashed out.”

Richard Dawkins and Rape Rape–“Not surprisingly, Dawkins is wrong—very wrong. By and large, the harmfulness of rape is in its violation of women’s consent. That violation is present whether or not a knife or stranger are involved.”

8 Latina Feminists Who Deserve More Recognition–“During the late 1960s and early 1970s, a time when Stonewall riots were making the gay-rights movement mainstream, bisexual trans Latina activist Sylvia Rivera advocated for the queer and transgender people the movement had left out.”

The blatant sexism of lists about ‘attractive girls’–“And why does he think women should aspire to meet (only) his consideration of what constitutes attractiveness, instead of what makes them feel good in their own skin. I guess he thinks we’re not doing enough to make women ashamed of their bodies. Onward, brave soldier!”

How Did the FBI Miss Over 1 Million Rapes?–“Yung’s analysis, which focused on cities with populations of more than 100,000, found that 22 percent of the 210 studied police departments demonstrated ‘substantial statistical irregularities in their rape data.'”

Gambit – Best Worst Costume Ever–“It would seem, however, that Gambit’s creators were working in active conflict with each other. His costume not only fails to compliment his role, it actively opposes it.”

Design Diaries – Gambit–“There is a reason that the Gambit that showed up in the Wolverine movie looked nothing like the original. The original costume would look ludicrous on screen.”

Food is NOT Medicine–“So I’d go on health food kicks where I really tried to nourish my body, get enough sleep, exercise…only to end up sicker than I had been before (at which point I would go back to the bland, simple foods I had been eating, because they were they only foods that didn’t make me feel awful).”

Share this:

I share a lot of links on Twitter and Facebook that I don’t blog about because I don’t have much to add. The reading list is a periodic feature where I share those links with my blog audience too. Of course, you’re still welcome to follow me on Twitter.

Something is wrong with SIWOTI!–“But for some reason, some people get extremely bitter about being told to go away. They are outraged that you deny them the privilege of participating on your wonderful blog.”

In response to those who tell me how to write about diversity–“It says so much that these critics don’t care that perhaps, as a person who isn’t white, I’m deeply affected by a lack of racial diversity in a major creative industry and that strikes hardest while playing a game with only white characters for no good reason.”

Why The New Vikings Stadium Is A Problem–“The Minnesota Vikings have been made aware of how lethal their glass design will be to migrating birds by Minnesota Audubon. They’ve chosen to ignore that and it’s a big problem.”

Change Glass, Save Birds–“This decision is a death warrant for birds. This is a billion dollar stadium, and the cost to save thousands of birds by using bird safe glass could cost about one-tenth of one percent of that.”

“Apparently anti-feminist women have now taken to promoting the meme that feminists ‘won’t take no for an answer’ and ‘can’t accept that no means no.'”

Encouraging Everyday Diversity–“Earning your readers’ and submitters’ trust doesn’t mean that you don’t fuck up. It’s impossible to never fuck up, or at least, I don’t think it is a worthwhile aspiration.”

This Is What Has Been Happening–“What constitutes ‘legitimate criticism’ is, for example, a thread with 472 comments debating whether it’s acceptable to mock me for being fat and/or not understanding how my own body works.”

Oh, Uncle Richard–“Imagine if he had apologized for that, had expressed horror specifically at how his ill-conceived and fallacious attack had painted a target on Watson’s back.”

“I Have A Cultural Studies Degree” Is the New “I Have Black Friends”–“As we silently shuffled out of the theater, unable to think of anything but the horrifying images of violence committed against Black and brown bodies, I overheard a white girl nearby say that she really, really connected with the movie. Why? Because it was ‘like, basically everything I’m studying in my African-American studies classes.'”

Richard Dawkins doesn’t speak for me…so, who does?–“Richard Dawkins is one of the handful of living scientists that Americans can name. This means that he’s something of a spokesperson for science, and for scientists. Whether I like it or not, he represents me, in his role as a public face of science.”

Share this:

I share a lot of links on Twitter and Facebook that I don’t blog about because I don’t have much to add. The reading list is a periodic feature where I share those links with my blog audience too. Of course, you’re still welcome to follow me on Twitter.

You said it yourself, you’re a writer, not a diplomat–“Why would I have to ask her what she meant in her video when her video is already out there? What is made public is what is made public; it doesn’t matter what the intentions were, what matters is what is made public.”

Inclusive event resources–“The Ada Initiative strives for inclusive and safe events, and would love for other events to adopt our resources, which we license them CC BY-SA for use by the community.”

Of Allies, Outliers, and Invisibility–“This isn’t always the case, and I’ve watched others get hate for overreaching as an ally…while knowing the ‘ally’ in question…wasn’t, and also couldn’t out themselves.”

On unsolicited criticism–“We continued our poll. The male presenters we asked received no unsolicited feedback (other than ‘that was great!’). Some women I spoke with, however, had received feedback on their tone as well.”

Comic Con 2014: Outcry against harassment grows.–“There are signs Comic-Con is heeding some of the criticism — a last-minute email sent to badge-holders late Tuesday prominently highlighted its anti-harassment policy, and encouraged attendees to enlist security if they feel unsafe.”

Panel rejects Entenza’s voter ID claim in state auditor race–“Of the two bills, Otto voted against one that would require voter identification and in favor of another requring voter ID. However, the Voter ID language was stripped from the language in conference committee and Otto voted in favor of the revised version.”

Dem poll: Majority of women oppose Hobby Lobby decision–“That includes 73% of Democratic women and 60% of independents, and 35% of Republicans. Also, 57% of these total female respondents — including 55% of independents — say they would be more likely to support a candidate who opposes the decision.”

Share this:

I share a lot of links on Twitter and Facebook that I don’t blog about because I don’t have much to add. The reading list is a periodic feature where I share those links with my blog audience too. Of course, you’re still welcome to follow me on Twitter.

Do not tell me to stop fighting–“And Glenn herself of course is not above ‘infighting.’ She’s doing it right now. She’s doing it in her latest video about ‘Atheism + pussies’ (her blurb) and she’s doing it in this very post.”

Movement cohesion–“The surest way to earn my enmity, my directed criticism, is to ask us to stop other fights so we can pretend we’re all one big happy big-tent family.”

Depression and Self-Gaslighting–“What happens when you teach yourself not to trust your own perception? How many toxic people become ‘just difficult for me to deal with because I’m so insecure and oversensitive’?”

“I’m a strong woman and I don’t need help.”–“A friend of mine responded that, well, some of us aren’t strong, and some can’t set boundaries, and why do these people deserve to feel uncomfortable or even unsafe just because they don’t have the capability to be ‘strong’ in this way?”

So close–“C0nc0rdance is basically making the same mistake (to a lesser degree!) this clown in his comments is doing, caricaturing the feminist position because he doesn’t have the slightest clue what it is, so he fills it in with garbage he heard on the internet.”

The Wider Web

Some Observations on the Seventh Circuit’s Decision–“What was striking about the court’s opinion was its explicit recognition that the nonreligious—atheists, agnostics, humanists—are part of the fabric of American society, and that they don’t have to pretend to be religious to take part in the legal, social, and civic life of this country.”

Understanding the Crank Epidemic–“Why this lack of progress? The answer is that inflation paranoia isn’t a simple misunderstanding that can be corrected by pointing to evidence. It’s deeply embedded in the modern conservative psyche.”

I Don’t Care If You Like It–“[I]n this country, every barometer by which female worth is measured—from the superficial to the life-altering, the appreciative to the punitive—has long been calibrated to ‘dude,’ whether or not those measurements are actually being taken by dudes.”

Dump Your Toxic Friends–“Be unreasonable. You don’t need to justify or explain why you’re enforcing your boundaries. Your refusing to let other people stomp all over your self-worth is not up for public debate or open to discussion.”

WisCon: The Frenkel Decision–[I tweeted most of the links included here over the last week. Thanks to Natalie for putting this all in one place.]

Manufacturing the Talent Shortage–“This belief in the inherent capacity for skill in computing is problematic for several reasons, the least of which being that it is simply not borne out by the study and practice of learning and pedagogy, the volumes of research on brain plasticity, nor by our own experience developing our own skills and those of our present and future colleagues.”

Why I Put My Son in Dresses–“Putting Bobby in dresses is easier for an array of reasons—they’re easier to put on, easier to find (no need to make sure shirt and shorts match), and easier to change a diaper in. Pretty soon, they’ll be easier to potty train in.”

ScienceCareers to postdocs: Think happy thoughts!–“Are you for actual serious with this?? The article describes a new study–and I use this word lightly because it’s based on a one-time survey of 200 postdocs–that found less anxiety and depression in folks who self-reported more frequent positive emotions.”

Share this:

I share a lot of links on Twitter and Facebook that I don’t blog about because I don’t have much to add. The reading list is a periodic feature where I share those links with my blog audience too. Of course, you’re still welcome to follow me on Twitter.

The Inversion of Responsibility–“In case you haven’t been following the situation, the terrorists in question claimed offensive posts on social media as their ‘provocation’.”

The Wider Web

Facebook Has All the Power–“One of the things that disturbed me about the episode was a milieu of casual behaviourism among Facebook workers, who don’t seem aware that this view of other people is enormously reductive.”

Jesus, Why Can’t I Be A Secular Humanist?–“‘But God never called himself the universe. Humanists did that. Research Secular Humanism and you’ll see this is not semantics. It’s a human attempt to eliminate GOD.'”

Why Robin Thicke is the new Vanilla Ice–“There are a lot of parallel lines you can find between their stories. Both are white dudes who seemingly crossed racial boundaries and united people in a shared love for terrible dance tunes.”

A Convention Where Fandoms Converge–“Why do there appear to be alcoholic beverages in the hands of people who are considered straightedge shut-ins by a majority of the population?”

My First SkepchickCon–“Speaking in front of people is a lot less scary when you care a lot about the topic, your panel is full of awesome people, and you have a great moderator.”

The Sexual Politics of Autism–“Asperger was writing in a different era, of course, when these gender bifurcations were commonly accepted. But these ideas haven’t disappeared with modernity, thanks in large part to the work of psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen, one of today’s most famous autism scientists.”

Federal Court: Indiana Must Allow Secular Celebrants to Solemnize Marriages–“Addressing whether secular officiants should simply settle for obtaining ‘clergy’ status through quasi-religious mail-order enterprises, or whether secular organizations should just refer to themselves as ‘religious’ despite being explicitly nonreligious, Judge Easterbrook dismissed the idea, saying it would only serve to make hypocrites of nonreligious couples and groups.”

Feynman is not my hero–“Because every time I hear someone in my department or in one of my classes go on about how Feynman was so awesome I mean he was kind of a jerk to women but whatever, I file him (and it is almost always always a him) away as someone who would have sided against me in every single one of the situations I’ve mentioned.”

On Public Speaking While Fat–“As a woman, you are always going to be fat. People are always going to trot that one out to try and insult you, like taking up more space in the world, as a woman, is the absolute worst thing you can do.”

12 more viral fakes–“No, that supermoon isn’t real. No, that’s not what happens when sand is struck by lightning. And no, that’s not a sex-ed class from 1929.”

Weird Al’s “Word Crimes” Video–“You’re all going to love this video because it’s catchy, and well done, and charming in many so many ways. It’s frickin’ adorable, and I wish I could love it with you, but I can’t.”

Share this:

I share a lot of links on Twitter and Facebook that I don’t blog about because I don’t have much to add. The reading list is a periodic feature where I share those links with my blog audience too. Of course, you’re still welcome to follow me on Twitter.

Around FtB

What actually happened at Edinburgh Central Mosque–“A religious ban on bacon from shared secular space would have me up in arms. But one doesn’t have to accept religious doctrine to see desecrating private houses of worship as an intimidation tactic; look at how the Nazis went about it.”

Mental Math–“Except that it’s now late afternoon, and I spent five minutes attempting to sort out whether the mood boost of a long walk would be outweighed by the mood drop if I had the same experience, while factoring in the baseline anxious/on-edgeness of having had several days with bad experiences in a row.”

Creating Characters with Invisible Disabilities–“Take out the mental illness, and my books are filled with family drama—grief, the aging parent issue, love a second time around. I think of my characters as real people with more than their share of hardships, people who are struggling to make sense of extraordinary—and ordinary—circumstances.”

Welcome to the Breendoggle Wiki–“Walter said that he wasn’t mad at anyone — except Al and Sid — and would stay away from club meetings at least ‘until all this dies down,’ but that if this Witch Hunt were carried to the point where he was excluded from the Pacificon II, well then, Marion Zimmer Bradley would stay away too.”

Share this:

I share a lot of links on Twitter and Facebook that I don’t blog about because I don’t have much to add. The reading list is a periodic feature where I share those links with my blog audience too. Of course, you’re still welcome to follow me on Twitter.

Your “Jokes” About Sexist Harassment–“If you want me to keep writing, STOP doing this weird half-gloating half-bemoaning thing about how I’m going to get soooooo much harassment for what I just wrote, fuck those sexist assholes, amirite?”

Why Tech Companies Don’t Understand Online Abuse–“I understand why these tech dudes don’t get it, since they’ve probably never had to wonder, “How do I warn my friends and followers about this abusive person while minimizing the risk of said person turning on me and threatening me with rape and death?'”

Is Fat Our Friend?–“They intended to encourage U.S. residents to eat more fruits and vegetables. What they accomplished, instead, was a vast expansion of the market for simple starch-based carbs, and for starch-based sweeteners that took the place of fat in industrial food production.”

Choosing Our Targets for #TwitterTheocracy–“We’re glad that Twitter has changed its mind on these individual accounts and tweets, but the repressive source of that censorship still very much exists, and that’s where we’re putting our focus.”

Stephanie Kwolek, Chemist Who Created Kevlar, Dies At 90–“‘She found an opportunity at DuPont because many men were in the military at the time,’ reports the Wilmington News Journal. Kwolek continued to flourish there long after World War II ended, doing extensive work on polymers.”

Two-Parent Households Can Be Lethal–“Mental health professionals, law enforcement officials, judges and members of the clergy often showed greater concern for the maintenance of a two-parent family than for the safety of the mother and her children.”

Will There Be a Shi’a-Sunni War in the Middle East? Not Likely–“The success of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS–Also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, ISIL) in capturing large territories in Syria and Northern Iraq, and now threatening Baghdad, has raised once again the specter of a Sunni-Shi’a war in the Middle East. Such a scenario is possible, but unlikely.

The walls erected by traditional media–“Is it really the case that even with clear editorial policies in place a school superintendent cannot engage in journalism about education; that a physicist cannot run a recognize publication about physics; and that a blog run by a practicing physician is inherently not ‘editorially independent’?”

Share this:

I share a lot of links on Twitter and Facebook that I don’t blog about because I don’t have much to add. The reading list is a periodic feature where I share those links with my blog audience too. Of course, you’re still welcome to follow me on Twitter.

Around FtB

Repeat After Me–“As I said, I’ve been listening to Christian radio. I found it offensive–not because of my atheism, but because of my aesthetic commitment to proper rhyming verse.”

And the mansplainer brigade rushes in–“Do you think that it is inherently rude for women to point out to men that their romantic/ sexual advances are unwanted, and that it’s sexist to focus their attention to women entirely on our appearance?”

Women Remember: A Roundtable Interview–“I guess we caused some real destruction to the male notion that SF, like a good deal else, was theirs, all theirs, and only theirs. But I wonder if that notion is in fact destructible.”

Video Games Need More Than Damsels and Dames–“But to understand business survival in the face of moral decisions is not to immediately accede to the business. We are still allowed to question why businesses make decisions that appear wrong, from a moral or social perspective. “

Vasectomies Should Not Be Used as Punishment–“While it may not seem that forcing women to have children has all that much in common with trying to force a man not to have children, both are rooted in this unsavory ideal that the basic right to bodily autonomy should be abandoned in the face of other people’s disapproval of your sexual choices.”

Editor’s note: Michael Gerson replaces George Will–“The change has been under consideration for several months, but a column published June 5, in which Mr. Will suggested that sexual assault victims on college campuses enjoy a privileged status, made the decision easier.”

Why You Need to Close Your Open Offices Now–“Open offices were an extreme solution to begin with, and the data is in, folks: they don’t work. So cut your losses and close your offices before your embattled employees find a company that will.”

On Valuing Women and Others – thoughts in progress–“We may not read books or stories or watch movies or plays or view art by other women, LGBT or Q people, people of color, anyone different from ourselves. Or we may read those stories or see that art once in a blue moon but we do not celebrate those works, those voices.”

I swear–“Those rules about who swears and when? I find them kind of weird and interesting.”

Stop Being So Sensitive, Penn Jillette.–“It’s rare to see someone shout, “Be Civil!” at the privileged majority (and certainly not at atheist heroes that major organizations like American Atheists want to cozy up to).”

Coverage of Women on SFF Blogs (2013)–“Our data for this year doesn’t support our thesis quite as strongly as in previous years, but the data still shows that unfortunately, women writers are not being reviewed at the same rate as men.”

Welcome to griefbeyondbelief.org…–“You may just need a resource, or something to listen to or read. Or you may want to stay a while. It’s up to you how you use this space.”

Wis. Gov. Scott Walker Accused Of Illegal Fundraising–“‘The scope of the criminal scheme under investigation is expansive,’ lead investigator Francis Schmitz wrote in the Dec. 9 court filing. ‘It includes criminal violations of multiple elections laws’ including filing false campaign reports, he wrote, according to the AP.”

A Fresh Cry Of Pain: Fat-Shaming In Science–“She told me that her team did a lot of collaborative work in this lab, and she didn’t need someone who was going to ‘eat more than their fair share of the pizza, if you know what I mean.'”

State finds illegal sterilizations of female inmates–“Of the 144 tubal ligations performed on inmates from fiscal years 2005-06 to 2012-13, auditors found, more than a quarter were done without lawful consent, according to the report by State Auditor Elaine Howle.”